Testing network infrastructures and network end nodes often requires network test equipment that is capable of generating large numbers of test packets to simulate network traffic. This test traffic can also include application level test packets that emulate network packets associated with application level protocols. In addition, it is often desirable to test network infrastructures using network traffic experienced within real world network systems rather than using simulated network traffic. For example, a service provider may find that a particular mix of applications is causing a degradation of service in their network infrastructure and would like to replicate this traffic in a test network infrastructure. Replicating real world traffic in a test laboratory, however, is often difficult to achieve particularly for network service providers and enterprises that employ wide ranging network systems.
One possible solution is to capture packets within live network traffic using capture tools and then to replay this captured traffic within a test environment. However, such a direct packet capture technique would lead to inaccurate representations of the application level activity within the network, would capture a wide variety of extraneous and irrelevant packets, and would not be readily scalable due to the extremely large numbers of packets and associated data that would be required to be captured within live network traffic for network infrastructures. In addition, the packet capture itself may provide little visibility into application level interactions within the network infrastructure.